FPL provided media support for the “Nuns on the Bus” tour
Cheering, clapping and clamoring for photographs, fans have greeted the sisters at almost every campaign stop in Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois since their bus tour began its nine-state, 2,700-mile pilgrimage toward Washington.
“It’s good energy,” said Sister Joan McGlinchey, vicar of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office for Religious. “If I had the time myself, I’d get on the bus with them.”
But the nuns also have encountered less-than-warm welcomes. In Iowa, U.S. Rep. Steve King’s offices were locked when the nuns showed up for a scheduled appointment.
On Wednesday, about 100 supporters cheered and held signs as the four nuns stepped off the bus in Fox Lake, where Walsh’s staff had been instructed by their boss to treat the sisters with respect.
“As an Irish Catholic boy, I always genuflect at a nun,” Walsh said.
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John Gehring, FPL’s Senior Writer and Catholic Outreach Coordinator, is quoted in this article.
In the April issue, Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, wrote that the contraception mandate will force his organization “to use membership dues and money generated through insurance sales to fund health care that provides drugs and procedures that violate the moral teaching of the Catholic Church on the transmission and sanctity of human life.”
Anderson started out in politics, working as a legislative aid to Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., in the 1970s and 1980s. He later worked in President Ronald Reagan’s White House. He’s also taken fellow Catholic Joe Biden to task for comments the vice president made while still a senator from Delaware that Anderson said “cast doubt on the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on abortion.”
John Gehring, Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, said while the Knights’ charitable works was “commendable … its leadership has steered a fraternal organization into political waters in ways that should raise questions.”
Asked by reporters in Atlanta last week if the Knights’ involvement in the religious liberty campaign introduces at least the perception of partisanship, Lori said no.
“Think of what the Knights of Columbus does for the Catholic Church and for many other humanitarian causes,” he said. “To try to say that is in some way partisan is … an injustice.”
Other groups have contributed to the campaign, he said, mentioning Our Sunday Visitor and the Order of Malta.
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FPL provided media support for the “Nuns on the Bus” tour
Among those cheering the Nuns on the Bus is Amy Colony, formerly of Carlisle, and now living in Denver, where she’s an attorney with the Colorado attorney general’s office.
Watching the tour launch from afar, she wrote me, “They are precisely what I used to love and revere about the Catholic Church before I decided I could no longer tolerate the anti-woman stuff and exclusion of my gay brothers and sisters — and I had to walk away.” These nuns, she said, “are my heroes. True servants of Christ and true feminists.”
After hearing what the sisters were saying, I had to agree. Religion at its best isn’t just about personal morality or spiritual beliefs.
The most credible religious leaders stand up for the downtrodden and marginalized, both in words and in deeds, challenging power structures when necessary and evolving their teachings to stay relevant.
These nuns, who live in the trenches alongside the poor and suffering, can claim a credibility few others among us could. They should be listened to.
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FPL provided media support for the “Nuns on the Bus” tour
The mandate to crack down on socially active nuns upset some church parishioners who turned out to support the nuns.
“They want to bully these nuns and shut them down and tell them: ‘Get back in your place, ladies.’ No, it’s not going to be that way anymore,” said Mary Ann McCoy, of Des Moines, who attends St. Ambrose Cathedral.
She said the Vatican and bishops speaking so harshly of nuns has split the church.
“They’re women of courage,” McCoy said. “Back in the Old Testament they talked about prophets. A prophet is somebody who speaks for God and these are the things that God talked about — injustice, the poor, the marginalized, woman. Jesus was the greatest prophet when he went out and he shook things up a lot. Well, I think the sisters are walking the walk and talking the talk and that’s what’s important to us.”
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FPL did reporter outreach following the HHS contraception accommodation.
America’s Catholic bishops have criticized the White House’s mandate for insurers to provide free contraception coverage to employees, but plenty of other Catholic groups have endorsed the plan –some taking swipes at the bishops in the process.
“The Catholic bishops and their allies in the Republican Party are increasingly isolated,” James Salt, executive director of a liberal group called Catholics United, said in a statement over the weekend supporting the White House’s contraception rule.
“The bishops’ blanket opposition appears to the serve the interests of a political agenda, not the needs of the American people,” Salt continued, e-mailing his group’s support for the White House to tens of thousands of Catholics nationwide.
Another Washington-based Catholic operative, John Gehring, e-mailed reporters over the weekend to knock the bishops for criticizing President Barack Obama, even after his administration revised its contraception rule Friday to mandate that insurers – not Catholic institutions – pay for birth control coverage.
“You have to ask why the bishops can’t take yes for an answer,” wrote Gehring, who works with the progressive group Faith in Public Life.
On Wednesday, Gehring helped organize a call with reporters to discuss a congressional hearing this week at which some bishops are expected to testify against the contraception rule. “I believe everything my church teaches,” Nicholas Cafardi, a prominent Catholic lawyer, said on the call, voicing support for the birth control rule. ” I don’t consider this as a question of dogma, but of how we apply Catholic teaching in the real world.”
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